The stock market had appeared to pay close attention to worsening virus conditions in the U.S. on Tuesday. By Wednesday, that concern had already disappeared; the U.S. just reported more than 60,000 new cases of the virus in a single day for the first time ever — and the major indices all advanced by healthy margins.
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Tech giant Apple (ticker: AAPL) hit new all-time highs on Wednesday, advancing more than 2% on the heels of an analyst boosting the target price for the stock to $400 a share.
With tech yet again leading the way, the Nasdaq advanced 1.4% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 177 points, or 0.7%, to finish at 26,067.
United Airlines warns of dramatic workforce cuts. United Airlines Holdings ( UAL) warned 36,000 employees, or nearly half of all U.S. workers, that they could be furloughed effective Oct. 1. Although air traffic has been steadily ticking higher from its lows in the early days of the pandemic, future reservations don’t seem to be at healthy enough levels to support current labor costs, at least in management’s eyes.
Interestingly, the airline industry has received billions of dollars in government aid meant to support payrolls through the end of September, and the fact that the company couldn’t count on a second round of such aid from Uncle Sam was cited as a reason for the move.
Ant moving Alibaba. Shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba ( BABA) surged on Wednesday, jumping 9% on a report that the world’s most valuable fintech company, Ant Financial Services Group, was plotting an initial public offering in Hong Kong at a valuation upwards of $200 billion.
Alibaba owns a 33% stake in the sprawling online payments company, which also has its hands in insurance, credit, money-market funds and other segments of finance.
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Apple, New Cases Hit Record Highs originally appeared on usnews.com
